ON THIS WEEK’S COLUMN…

• WRAPPING UP THE WRAPS
• FINALLY GETTING THE POINT
• NATIONS NEW NORMAL
• WALLABIES POV
• LOSING START
• PHILIP ‘GOOSE’ DOYLE RIP
• CHAMPIONS CUP DRAW
• IRELAND SQUAD UPDATE
• TROLL PATROL
• COMPETITION UPDATES (incl 🔝🐱🐴)
• NEXT HARPIN’

WRAPPING UP THE WRAPS

Hi there welcome to the latest 80+ column. No Leinster/Ireland men’s game last weekend so there’s no wrap to wrap but I do have something of an announcement FWIW.

You can probably tell I love doing this rugby content-producing lark, especially because I get to do it at my own pace instead of falling over myself to satisfy algorithms and what-not. So while I will continue to do things that way going forward, my “real-life” circumstances have changed to an extent where I’ll have to cut down my output considerably.

Over the pas year or so it has become increasingly more difficult to stick to the schedule I am used to, so from next season our regular content is likely to be limited to this 80+ column, which will probably now go out on Thursdays, and one podcast, which instead of focusing on just the one match from the weekend, will likely post on Tuesday morning taking a more general look at what went on. The Preview Show as we know it will probably have to go unfortunately.

Obviously with social media and stuff I will continue to get my thoughts out there regularly, but I think this level output will suit me better for next season. I’ll keep things the way they are for the next few weeks and fine tune the new way of doing things during the off season.

Anyway, on with this week’s column, starting with of course the Front Five…

Anyone who has regularly read these pages will know I’m delighted with this news from the EPCR. I have been harping for years on the need to revert from what I call a “quantitative” try bonus point (awarded simply for scoring 4 tries) to a “differential” one (awarded for scoring 3 more tries than your opposition) and now we’re going to see it in the Champions & Challenge Cups.

Basically what it means is that you can’t wrap up the bonus point before half time and take your foot off the pedal. That way even if your opposition mounts a comeback in the second half and you still win, you are guaranteed the full five points. Now in that scenario there is jeopardy in that the BP can actually be taken off you so you’ll have to play the full 80 minutes.

It also mostly eliminates what I always considered to be the nonsense of a losing team coming away with two bonus points. One is enough for a defeat, thank you very much.

Sure, there are quirky exceptions which is why I used the word “mostly” above. Say a team wins 18-17 thanks to 6 penalties against 3 tries, 1 converted. Yes, that gets a bit clunky, but it is very much an exception, and the system has worked well in the 🔝🐱🐴 for years now and they have also been using it in Super Rugby. I would have it employed throughout the game and I hope the URC and World Cups join the cause sooner rather than later, but this is definitely a good start.

And that’s not the only change. They have also tweaked the way in which the 16 clubs qualify for the knockout rounds. Now instead of the top 4 in each pool making it, we have 3, with the remaining 12 clubs ranked against each other and the four best records making it.

Personally I like the thinking behind this, but maybe they have fallen between two stools with this? I know I usually say rugby doesn’t always need to do what soccer does, but in this case I’d say just go whole hog and adopt the “Swiss model” that has been used in the Champions League in recent seasons? If everyone must have just the four matches, then have one big table and let the 16 best records into the knockouts. This would reduce the possibility that still exists hereby a team wins all four of their matches yet still falls outside the top 4 seeds behind teams which didn’t.

I also like wins as the first tie-breaker and I also think this should be adopted everywhere, however especially for domestic competitions with a large amount of matches I believe it’s important to add a stipulation that draws be the second tie-breaker, otherwise a team which has lost more matches can get a higher ranking which seems to go against what the change is trying to do. Shouldn’t be an issue in the four-match EPCR schedule, though.

Still, I do like the direction in which the changes are going and we’ll see how they play out. For now I just like being reminded in articles like this that Leinster are still the reigning URC Champions….

CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL COLUMN ON SUBSTACK